(Quo vadis, lat. = Where are you going?)
In post-apocalyptic America a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his
son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are two of very few survivors trying to stay alive and making their way south. The world is ridden of all crops and wildlife and the search for food is an everyday struggle which led some survivors to resort to cannibalism, keeping human beings like cattle, only to be slaughtered and eaten by the strong. Father and son armed with a revolver, holding only two bullets for themselves, try evading capture by these gangs and also other strangers who find themselves in the same situation. The father does everything he deems necessary to protect his son and yet remains a beacon of sanity and half-hearted decency in comparison to the rest of mankind...
The Road, directed by John Hillcoat, is a somewhat shallow attempt to revive a forgotten genre. Post-apocalyptic films flourished towards the end of the cold war, warning people of a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers, and went extinct at the end of it. Audiences did not want to hear about the MAD-principle (Mutually Assured Destruction) anymore and looked forward into a brighter future, thus not providing a market for this genre anymore.
The Road however does not specify in any way how the world has come to an end and seeks to highlighten what would become of the survivors of a society who so readily forsakened their ethics in order to see the next light of morning, not even shying away from cannibalism
Father and son, whose names are not revealed, aim to head south, hoping for a warmer climate and a sustainable supply of food. It soon becomes apparent that the father has abandoned nearly all hope and states that his only purpose in life was to safeguard his son, readily killing an assailant and not feeling any remorse. The son in his childish naivity - or quite possibly- his innocent world-view becomes a reminder of his father's conscience and stands in as a memorial to once highly valued ethical standards of the ante-armageddon civilization.
The Road is a movie with great cinematography and an outstanding Viggo Mortensen in the lead-role, proving that he is also a good actor when he is not fighting orks. The story revolves around mankind, bereft of all its luxuries and essential living-standards, resorting back from its socio-darwinist sense of inequality to the cold brutality of the original, darwinist principle: The survival of the fittest. The characters were not given names in order to create a blank space that allows the viewer to put himself in their places, which is a rather ingenious trick.
The movie, despite its ambitious leap into a genre that is far from the modern zeitgeist, does not manage to reach a certain sense of depth. Many depressing images of ruins and human remains are shown, yet the narrowing in on the two main characters hampers the viewer's attempts to gain an adequate level of sentiment and too easily makes the mistake of seeing everything through the protagonists' eyes. Although this was certainly intended, it would have been more beneficial, if the supporting characters had been given more room for development, thus providing more vantage points from which to approach the story.
The Road is a bit of an "out-of-time" movie, that makes it even more special. As mentioned above, mankind's doom was a looming possibility until the collapse of the USSR and still is today. The Road seeks to explore shades of the human personality that are usually suppressed, ignored, played down, institutionalized or blamed on the Devil. Apart from lacking dramatic substance, it certainly is a movie worth watching. Acting, cinematography, directing and dialog range from good to memorable and if you are a more philosophically-minded viewer, it will certainly give you something to think about!
